KEVIN MODESTI: Dodgers hit new low

Embarrassment for the Dodgers used to be so rare, it was "Nightline" news. Now, they hit an embarrassing new low every week.

The baseball franchise that once epitomized "family" is torn by the owners' bitter divorce. The ballpark touted as "Blue Heaven on Earth" is rocked by the near-fatal beating of a fan on opening day. As attendance plummets, Frank McCourt has to take out a $30 million personal loan to make April payroll.

All of those dark headlines turn out to be mere preludes to what happened Wednesday: Major League Baseball announced it is taking control of the Dodgers' operations and investigating the club's finances.

It's hard to see how things can get any worse. Then again, the season is young.

There was a time when wise guys accused the Dodgers of running the sport, saying team owner Walter O'Malley worked its commissioners like puppets.

Now, in a complete turnaround, Commissioner Bud Selig is putting the Dodgers in the hands of a trustee. Selig says he is acting "to ensure that this club is being operated properly now and will be guided appropriately in the future." He refers ominously to "deep concerns regarding ... finances."

Seven years after Frank and Jamie McCourt bought the club from the Fox Corp. - a husband and wife from Boston talking about restoring the Dodgers' winning ways and eventually handing off the franchise to their four sons - the McCourts have been declared the baseball-management equivalent of unfit parents.

When you think back on the 53 seasons since the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles from Brooklyn, you think of transcendent highs: The move itself, along with the New York-to-San Francisco Giants, bringing the major leagues to the West Coast. Five World Series championships from 1959 to 1988, making them the New York Yankees of the National League in that stretch. Magical stars like Sandy Koufax, Fernando Valenzuela and Kirk Gibson. The Santa Claus figure of Tommy Lasorda. A four-man infield that stuck together for eight years at the start of the era of carpetbagging athletes.

Has there been a point this low?

There was the Al Campanis scandal. Campanis, the general manager who built their powerhouse teams of the 1970s and early '80s, was fired at the start of the 1987 season for remarks denigrating the executive abilities of blacks. He spoke on a "Nightline" TV show about the legacy of Jackie Robinson, who broke the major-league color line 40 years earlier as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers, in what will always be the proudest of the club's proud moments.

But the Dodgers shook off the Campanis shame, at least on the field of play, winning the World Series the next year.

It's hard to see them bouncing back as quickly from Tuesday's jolt and the slide that led to it. Sports franchises, like fish, rot from the head. It takes dollars - tens of millions of them - to buy a winning roster; the Dodgers, in baseball's second-richest media market, have the 12th-highest player payroll among the 30 teams.

Fred Claire. the former Dodgers executive who succeeded Campanis as GM and won the '88 championship, said he was "shocked" by Wednesday's development.

"It's certainly a very sad chapter in the history of the Dodgers," Claire said. "We're not just talking about any franchise - we're talking about the Dodgers."

It happened to the Montreal Expos, right before the Expos packed up their empty trophy case and moved to Washington, D.C.

In basketball, the New Orleans Hornets - the Lakers' playoff opponents - have been owned by the league since a sale fell through.

Expos, Hornets ... Dodgers. Nice company.

"Obviously the commissioner and his office have great concerns, and they've privy to all of the things that are happening with the club," Claire said.

Claire noted that a franchise is best judged by its fans. On that score, the assessment is fairly scathing these days. Most of the faithful doubted McCourt's financial chops even before this, many are shaken by the opening-day violence at Dodger Stadium, and attendance is down more sharply than can be explained by the Dodgers' 8-10 start.

Spoiled by success, Los Angeles sports fans used to be the nation's biggest optimists, seeing a championship around every corner.

In character, some Dodgers fans will pretend to rejoice at Wednesday's news, hoping this is the beginning of the end of the McCourt era.

Not so fast. This might be the lowest low. That doesn't mean it's the last.